Production context (C3)

• Production company:


  Miramax
• Editor:


  Rizande
• Cinematographer


  Charlone
• Score:


  Pinto
• Financed by TV Globe which is Brazil's biggest TV channel
• Based on the Brazilian bestseller 'Cicada de Deus' by Paulo Lins
• Well-received critically - received 32 international prizes
• Seen as a fulfilment of Cinema Novo's highest aspirations coupled with a mastery of cinematic technique which followed the high and costly standards of Hollywood films
• 'The film is a blow to our sense of normality' -Jabor, critic
• However, received criticism for being a 'cosmetics of hunger' that stylised poverty - Bentes, critic
• Bridges the local and the universal, Brazilian reality and Hollywood-like expertise, social critique and entertainment
• The film used mainly local actors and Katia Lund spent six months training a group of younger kids  
• Around 100 children and young people hand-picked and placed into an actor's workshop – it focused on stimulating authentic street war scenes e.g. a shoot out, street scuffles
• Amateur actors used for two reasons: the lack of available professional black actors, and the desire for authenticity  
• The real gang ‘Low Gang’ in the city of God favela is rumoured to have composed a similar list to the one the runts make at the end of the film  
• Shot on location in Cicade Alta, a nearby city of City of God --> authenticity
• Meirelles background:


  • Meirelles was born in a middle-class family in Brazil  
  • He began producing experimental videos and formed a small, independent company called ‘Olhar Eletronico’ 
  • He was in the advertising industry --> ‘advertising taught me how to communicate my message’ 
  • He read Cicade de Deus in 1997 and decided to turn it into a movie despite an intimidating story involving more than 350 characters  
• Once the screenplay was written, Meirelles gathered a crew mixed with professional technicians and inexperienced actors chosen between the youngsters living in the favelas surrounding Rio 
• “I made this film for the Brazilian middle class...it was an opportunity to find out more about my country’ -Meirelles  
• Meirelles had never visited a favela, so he approached Lund, a filmmaker who became a specialist on Rio’s favelas  
• Both Meirelles and Lund are from Sao Paulo, Rio’s rival city --> ‘It helped that I was not from Rio, people from Rio are too close to what’s going on. In Rio the social contrasts are so great that you are almost blinded by them’ 
• Meirelles tried to include the positive sides of the favelas in the film (‘life in a favela is happy...no one knows how to have fun like people in a favela’), but his main priority was making a film about social exclusion – aided by locals in cast showing him the lifestyle of favela
• Technological context:


  • The use of digital editing allowed Rezende to experiment and try out new ideas 
  • He said many of the interpretations of characters were made at the editing stage 
  • Different results could be obtained with the same footage ‘all the scenes evolved from the actor’s improvisations and of course, each one was unique.’ 
• Cinema novo/New cinema


  Genre and movement of film – noted for emphasis on social equality and intellectualism that rose to prominence in Brazil during the 1960s and 1970s
• Cinema Novo formed in response to class and racial unrest both in Brazil and the US  
• The Brazil that is symbolised was one of exploitation, violence and deprivation 
• Influenced by Italian neorealism and the French New Wave  
• Instead of idyllic cliches and a representation of the rich, Cinema Novo advocated cinematic representation of the real Brazil --> social inequality previously made invisible, true to the violence  
• City of God is seen as an utterly realist representation of the daily life of drug dealers in Rio’s favellas